From memory request to PL/SQL source line [ errorstack dump ]

In my last blog post i described a geeky way to trace back the responsible PL/SQL code for a particular memory request into the PGA. It was based essentially on a dynamic tracing tool “systemtap” to probe on  specific functions entry such as KGHAL memory allocator functions (Based on Stefan Koehler dtrace script )  and relied on calling an internal oracle function “pfrln0lookup” using “oradebug call” to  get the actual PL/SQL line number.It would have been safer if we reverse engineered the function “pfrln0lookup” to extract only the thing that matter and avoid calling it but this need time and is forbidden :p  !

So here i will describe a safer and simpler approach relying only on collecting multiple errorstack dump samples and a little shell script to parse the trace file !